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Laurent Chevalier is a nearly 15-year-old boy living in Dijon in 1954, who loves jazz, always receives the highest grades in his class and who opposes the First Indochina War. He has an unloving father who's a gynecologist and an affectionate Italian mother, Clara, as well as two older brothers, Thomas and Marc. One night, Thomas and Marc take Laurent to a brothel, where Laurent loses his virginity to a prostitute before they are disrupted by his drunken brothers. Upset, he leaves on a scouting trip, where he catches scarlet fever and is left with a heart murmur.

After Laurent is bedridden and cared for and entertained by Clara and their maid Augusta, he and Clara check into a hotel while he receives treatment at a sanatorium. He takes interest in two young girls at the hotel, Helene and Daphne, and also spies on his mother in the bathtub. Clara temporarily leaves with her lover, but comes back distraught after their breakup, and is comforted by her son. After a night of heavy drinking on Bastille Day, Laurent and Clara have sex. Clara tells him afterwards that this incest won't be repeated, but that they shouldn't look back on it with remorse. Afterwards, Laurent leaves their room, and after unsuccessfully trying to seduce Helene, spends the night with Daphne.

Director Louis Malle wrote Murmur of the Heart in part as an autobiography. As Malle said, "My passion for jazz, my curiosity about literature, the tyranny of my two elder brothers, how they introduced me to sex— this is pretty close to home." Malle also suffered from a heart murmur and shared a hotel room with his mother during treatment. Aside from this, the film is a work of fiction, and takes place later than Malle's true childhood.[1] Malle asserted in interviews that the incest, in particular, is fictional.[2]

The film enjoyed a positive reception from critics, with Rotten Tomatoes counting nine favourable reviews out of 10.[3]Roger Ebert gave the film a four-star review, comparing it favourably to The 400 Blows (1959), and writes that with the incest, Malle "takes the most highly charged subject matter you can imagine, and mutes it into simple affection."[4] In 1989, Desson Howe wrote in the Washington Post that the film maintained its "fresh intelligence and delicacy" and "Malle's world of sarcastic, upper-middle-class brats seems to be Murmur's most enduring creation."[2] In 1990, Richard Stengel gave the film an A- in Entertainment Weekly, writing "Almost everything about this coming-of-age story rings true, and Malle avoids any heavy-handed explanations of family behavior."[5]

In his 2002 Movie & Video Guide, Leonard Maltin gives the film three and a half stars and calls it a "fresh, intelligent, affectionately comic tale."[6] Roger Greenspun wrote a negative opinion in The New York Times, claiming "it isn't very good" and "that it could probably have been made with as much distinction by any of those directors, all equally anonymous, who specialize in urban romantic comedy (or tragedy) of a sophistication that is supposed to be peculiarly French."[7]

US director Wes Anderson cited Murmur of the Heart an influence, saying he loved the characters Laurent and Clara. Regarding the incest, he says, "The stuff between him and the mother feels more kind of romantic almost- but also taboo and scary in a way, which makes it even more seductive."[8] US director Noah Baumbach also named the film as an influence.[9]